Chef Sara Moulton Answers Your Cooking Questions

I feel your pain. Dietary restrictions are a huge issue these days, and I am not unsympathetic to them, but it seems to me that you should not complain when offered a vegetarian meal.

I find that pasta, particularly lasagna, seems to satisfy everyone – maybe you could make two lasagnas with essentially the same ingredients but put meat in one. So make a big batch of cream sauce, make a big batch of tomato sauce. Add sauteed ground beef or turkey to half the tomato sauce, reserve the other half plain for the vegetarian version. Then either slice some eggplant, brush it with oil and roast it - or marinate some Portobellos with oil, garlic, herbs, lemon and roast them or saute up a ton of spinach with some garlic and let one of those vegetable items be a layer in the vegetarian lasagna.

Finally, layer the carnivorous lasagna with pasta, tomato meat sauce, cream sauce, cheese. Layer the vegetarian version with one of those vegetables you prepped from above, tomato sauce, cream sauce and cheese and then bake them.

Serve with a huge salad and lots of garlic bread (the bread will certainly lead to general happiness).